Current Research

I have leadership responsibilities for forest carbon estimation and reporting within the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the USDA Forest Service. This program is responsible for reporting on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals in the forest land category as part of the United States' commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This involves working with a team of scientists and staff to compile estimates of carbon stocks and stock changes in forest ecosystems for national and international reporting instruments. It also requires working with scientists from other land use categories to ensure transparency, consistency, completeness, comparability, and accuracy in GHG reporting. I also lead the timber products output (TPO) group within the northern FIA program, which is responsible for reporting on industrial and non-industrial uses of roundwood from Maine to the Great Plains.

Research Interests

In addition to leadership of the carbon estimation and reporting and northern TPO groups, I use strategic-level forest inventory data and auxiliary information (e.g., climate and remotely sensed data) to develop models that estimate carbon stocks and stock changes in forest ecosystem carbon pools for the FIA program and GHG reporting. I am also interested in developing new inventory and monitoring techniques to facilitate carbon accounting across spatial and temporal scales.

Why This Research is Important

Forest ecosystems represent the largest terrestrial carbon sink on earth and provide myriad goods and services to society. Improving our understanding of forest carbon dynamics will provide Forest Service partners with a better picture of the forest resource, allowing them to make more informed policy and management decisions.

National Research Highlights

Land use and land use change data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program makes possible a first-of-its-kind analysis of carbon dynamics associated with forest land conversion in the National Inventory Report of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks in the U.S.

Field measurements of litter and soil attributes in the Forest Inventory and Analysis program were used, for the first time, to develop predictions of litter and soil carbon (C) stocks and stock changes in U.S. forests. This work resulted in substantial increases in the contribution of the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool, from approximately 44 percent of the total forest ecosystem C stocks to 71 percent, in the forest C budget of the United States.

Researchers with the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program have sampled downed and dead woody material (DWM) since 2002 so most U.S. states now have a complete cycle of DWM data. As a result, for the first time, researchers used field measurements to obtain estimates of DWM biomass and carbon stocks for the FIA program's report and for DWM carbon estimates in the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory report.